After failing to see the sell the 1,109-carat “Lesedi La Rona”, the biggest diamond found in more than a century, at Sotheby’s last May, Lucara Diamond Corp. now says it is in “no rush” to put the diamond in the market again. In an interview with Rough & Polished, CEO William Lamb said that Lucara would assess the market and potentially put the stone on the market again once an advanced analysis of the stone was complete in the first quarter of 2017.
Lamb added that the company has learnt many things “during the auction process” and that it would make a number of changes “to better demonstrate to the private collector what the intrinsic value of the stone is prior to going back to the auction platform”.
The tennis ball sized diamond was discovered by Lucara at their Karowe mine in Botswana in November 2015 and is the largest gem-quality rough diamond to have been discovered in over a century, and the largest gem-quality diamond in existence today.
Speaking on his view about the diamond industry in 2017, Lamb said that the market will be “determined by the sales and marketing efforts for polished goods through the holiday season, which in turn will either open liquidity early in 2017 or have a negative impact on rough diamond prices”.
